Our excursion to Garbage Dump

What a fabulous day we had today!

“I am the garbage man, I empty all the garbage cans

I put all the muck into my truck, with a rattle and a clang, clang, clang”.

We weren’t garbage men today however we went to see where all the garbage goes, after the garbage truck collects the garbage from our homes, schools, offices, hotels etc. Some of us walked from school to the big street to catch the bus and some of us went straight to the bus stop outside the Yamaha Music School. It was a long journey to get there and we managed the endless walking and getting on and off buses. It was especially challenging for our teachers, because they were keenly aware that it was morning rush hour and in stations in Tokyo, there are always many people walking.

The bus came quickly and we were lucky to have seats on the first ride to Shinagawa station. We hopped off the bus and held the rope and climbed stairs to get into the station. We negotiated walking through the masses of humanity in Shinagawa station with ease. Luckily, we brought along our park rope and we walked through the station holding the rope with our mums and teachers on either side, keeping us safe. Our smocks are bright red so it was easy to spot us among all the people. When we arrived at the back of the station, we had to walk down some stairs and we stopped to have something to drink and a snack. We enjoyed having a rest before we took the trip on the second bus. This bus ride seemed much longer than the first one because we had to go past our destination and then come back, because it was on the other side of the road. And then……………..we arrived!

We got off the bus and crossed a very wide street with lots of huge cement mixer trucks driving on it. The reason why there were so many cement mixer trucks was because the factory across the road from the Garbage Dump is a concrete factory. They mix sand and other materials to make concrete which is used for building.

Maryna went into the Garbage Dump factory and a man came out to greet us. We followed him up to the second floor and saw a model of the entire factory. There were buttons for us to push so that we could see the various rooms and sections of the area. When we walked through the building we could recognize some of the names and the places that we had seen in the model. There was a waste bunker where the garbage trucks empty their trucks of all the garbage and there was an ash bunker which is where all the waste goes when it is burned. The bunkers were huge. Inside the waste bunker there was a waste crane which we thought looked like an octopus, spider or a claw. It lifts the waste up and then mixes it. It came right up to where we were looking through a window and we could see that there were garbage bags, leaves, and plants in it. Then it opened its claws and dropped the waste. It looked like snowflakes made from garbage when it fell down.      There were two of them in the waste bunker. In the ash bunker, there was ash which looked like dust. We saw so many garbage trucks driving in to the area called the platform. They backed up into a lane that had a number and then opened up the back of the garbage truck. They follow instructions from the control room and when the trucks were empty, we saw them drive out. Giant doors opened for them to drive through. The great thing about the garbage dump was that the garbage is used to create power, that filters the smoke that comes from burning the garbage, so that the air that comes out through the chimneys is clean. The place where we walked was so clean and we saw another model of the Garbage Dump which was made from Lego.

This picture shows you the whole process that garbage goes through at the dump. We first watched a video and then we asked the man to stop the video because it was a bit too advanced for us. After the video, we toured the building and saw everything. And then it was time to say ‘thank you’ and go back on the bus to Shinagawa station. Then we took a few taxis and came back to school. Our teachers thought that we would be very hungry and some of us were; and we were all exhausted. Some of us who do not usually sleep at this time of day, slept. We think that our teachers were also exhausted and hungry. We all have a worksheet in our school bags, to complete at home and return to school tomorrow. We would like to thank our friends, teachers and mums for coming with us on our excursion and for enjoying the time with us, and learning so much.

Here we are looking at the model of the entire building.

Here the trucks are arriving and backing up to dispose of the garbage.

The claws in the waste bunker and the ash in the ash bunker.  

Thanks for a wonderful day with our Petals friends.

                           Love, all the eco-friends in Petals Class